Into the Wild
The idea of letting go of everything, cutting up the credit cards, and shipping off for the wilderness is an idea that many of us encounter. It’s tempting. The purity of the wild, of breathing in the fresh air without the umbrage of exhaust fumes or modern pressures clogging our lungs, is seductive to say the least. But most of us, if not almost all of us, resist the seductive siren song of the trees and the brush and go about our daily business of tilling the concrete soil in the modern world.
Christopher McCandless heard the song, perhaps through a Jack London novel, and gave in to it. With a strong will, a book about poisonous plants, and a devotion to bucking modern life’s trappings, McCandless headed out after graduating from Emory University in Georgia in 1990. He gave $24,000 of his leftover college fund to Oxfam and bolted for the open road. McCandless worked a variety of jobs from time to time and slipped in between periods of having money and food to periods of having no money and very little food. His goal was Alaska. McCandless consistently kept a journal, writing in it up until his final days in Alaska. He died of starvation inside of a bus he had lived in.
McCandless’ story was turned into a bestselling non-fiction book by author Jon Krakauer and was made into a film by Sean Penn. Penn’s film stays remarkably close to the story as found in Krakauer’s book. Pieces of McCandless’ journal and testimony from witnesses and people who knew him fleshed out the story for the book, giving us a picture of McCandless as a young man with a will for adventure and a disdain for the times in which he lived, his parents, and modern society as a whole.
Emile Hirsch stars as McCandless in Penn’s film. He inhabits the role beautifully. Other performers swirl around him, caught up in his presence and enamoured with the vision of Christopher that he so graciously conjures. We are introduced to a cast of characters, given glimpses at the real people who Christopher surrounded himself with and given a chance to guess at why he wanted to escape some others. His parents, for one, were clear motivators for his decision to head into the wilderness. Here they are played by William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden. His confused but sympathetic sister (Jena Malone) narrates the tale as best she can.
Penn has constructed a film that does not glorify Christopher McCandless. It does not mourn him, celebrate him, or condemn him. Instead, Penn’s passion as a director is evident in his ability to let the story breathe and to let the reality sink in. It is a serious film, deeply reflective and filled with the uncompromising nature of the land and of Christopher’s ideas. Indeed, the grand lesson that Penn aims to impart here is that McCandless doubtlessly died from loneliness…poisonous plant seeds, starvation, or not.
Perhaps we all know a Christopher McCandless. Maybe we know somebody who wanted to get away from it all, who wanted to escape, and who had the desire and passion to do so despite all odds. McCandless, as embodied by Hirsch and described by Penn’s film, had his escape, but he also had his defiance and his idiocy. Indeed, by abandoning his sister to the strains of their existence and by casting off the shackles of life in such a dramatic fashion, it could be argued that he is far from heroic. Brave, maybe, but Christopher McCandless is no hero. And Sean Penn has no desire to make him one.
Instead, the best lesson to be grasped from Into the Wild is that we ought to take heart and take it often. Life is wild; it is a frenzied, often-trying existence with little respite from the chase of material goods and the ire of those who wish to see us fail. McCandless escaped that, not realizing that the true heart of existence comes not from solitude in the wilderness but from the people he encountered along the way. Each, in a small or big way, saved him.
Unity, compassion, friendship; that is Penn’s message.
Trailer:
